"The peaking of world oil production presents the U.S. and the world with an
unprecedented risk management problem. As peaking is approached, liquid fuel
prices and price volatility will increase dramatically, and, without timely mitigation,
the economic, social, and political costs will be unprecedented. Viable mitigation
options exist on both the supply and demand sides, but to have substantial
impact, they must be initiated more than a decade in advance of peaking."

"World oil production peaking will require physical mitigation if we are to avoid severe, long-lasting, worldwide economic damage. In the following, we identify available options for oil peaking mitigation, and we estimate the time required for effective implementation. Our approach is approximate and transparent to facilitate understanding."

"Over the past two decades, the United States has, by default, come to rely on an “In Gas We Trust” energy policy. Natural gas increasingly has been seen as the preferred fuel for all applications, nowhere more than in the electric generation sector. However, the greatly increased use of natural gas forecast for the electricity sector may not be economically or technically feasible, and it does not represent optimal or desired energy policy. Rather, a more rational energy policy would be to use coal and nuclear power as the sources of new electricity generation and to use natural gas for the applications for which it is best suited — space heating and industrial use."

"This paper assesses the major U.S. long-range energy forecasting studies conducted over the past half century, identifies the errors made and lessons learned in energy forecasting, and discusses the implications for current and future attempts to accurately forecast energy consumption, production, and prices. Over the past several decades, long-range energy forecasting has been extremely difficult and the accuracy of the major forecasts has, in retrospect, often been found wanting."